Tag Archives: estimate

There are many essays and articles on ‘Planning Poker’ out there. So I do not need to repeat the principles here. By checking out the recommended links (and folloups and others from your own research) you need to understand the following:

What a story point of a project looks like and how you generate those story points in advance. Remember, your estimation should include design, coding, testing and delivery. In Planning Poker it is your goal to come up with estimates to those those story points with your team.

The process of how one story point is estimated using the Planning Poker card deck and how to narrow down your team members’ estimates through discussion of the ‘played’ estimates.

The background of the card deck used and why there are such odd numers in it.

The effect all this will have to your project and the team.

The important thing is not the single estimate as such, but rather the open discussion among the the team members in advance, the mix of different perspectives and the collection of confidence in the team’s estimates. If the team is not able to get confident for an estimate you better recheck the user story in question and clarify it – possibly again with the customer. The more confident the team in one estimate is (=no big spread in single estimates of the team members), the less unclear ‘assumptions’ have been made in the estimate itself. This, in the end, reduces the overall risk (friction and interruptions) during the actual project and most importantly makes your customer happy.